Hill of the Wangie and Burgiehill

Hill of the Wangie (NJ137537; 319m)

It wasn’t a good morning for going up a hill, with cloud down as low as 250m. Fortunately, Mick was quite happy to go out in the dull showery weather, so whilst I devoted some time to reading, off Mick went to run 4 miles out and 4 miles back along the Dava Way. By the time we reached the start point for my first hill, it was early afternoon and the cloud base had lifted, even if it was still a bit grey out.

Hill of the Wangie is such a fabulous name. Unfortunately, it’s not a hill which lives up to its name; in fact, it’s rather a dull lump of forestry. Happily, it’s a forest which houses some well established mountain bike trails (which looked quite technical to me, although I’ve never mountain biked in my life, so I’m really not the best person to express an opinion on the subject) which, provided you don’t meet any bikes, gives a good route to walk to within a short distance of the summit.

Even though I chose the wrong break in the forest at the top of the mountain bike trail (I looked at the map and looked at the break in front of me, completely failing to notice that there was another break to my left which would take me even nearer to the trig) and found myself climbing over blow-downs, followed by a straight-line through the forest when I realised my error, it was still a very easy hill, and I even managed to come out exactly at the trig point:

I thought that such a dull hill, with no view whatsoever, deserved something different from my usual ‘fixed grin’ selfie, so I experimented with a couple of facial expressions, including the ‘oh my god, there’s a bear running at me’ look:

Making my way back down, I might have struggled to remember where I’d left the mountain bike trail, if it wasn’t for this handy bit of engineering, which stood out:

An impressive bit of informal engineering, using tree trunks and logs to build a bridge

Thirty two minutes after setting out, I was back (which was, to the minute, the time Mick had guessed it would take me), having covered a whole mile and a half with 170m of ascent.

Burgiehill (NJ097559; 254m)

Neither of today’s hills was going to fill much time, and this one was even more straightforward than Hill of the Wangie, even if I did throw in a little bit of spice by not entirely following the track which leads the whole way to the summit. At the point where it started heading slightly downhill, before reascending, I could see no reason why I couldn’t just yomp across a felled area of the forest, so that’s what I did. The bonus of this route was that it brought me out at the trig point, which apparently proves a little elusive for some people.

The trig isn’t at the very top, so I did the usual wandering around before deciding that the break which runs through the forest to the NE looked perfectly doable, so that’s the way I headed down.

With a whole 35m of ascent, and a total distance of two miles, it wasn’t a taxing outing and I was back in 39 minutes. A bit freakily, that was (to the minute) the time Mick had guessed it would take me. He’s getting good at this ‘guess the time’ game!